The Year’s Best - China top Target Sports nation in 2018

Another exciting sporting year is drawing to a close, and it is time for us to reveal the final rankings in GSN’s unique sport groups,

starting with those for which the year-end table is already definitive.

GSN’s Target Sports group ranks the best sporting nations in Shooting and Archery. Two sports only, but both are Olympic sports, and Shooting features no less than 22 different events at its top tournaments.

Since 2013, South Korea and China have alternated as Target Sports winners, with Russia and the USA sneaking in the occasional second place.

This year, China narrowly beat 2017 winners South Korea. The latter won Archery (worth altogether 312 points), ahead of Turkey and the USA, while China topped Shooting (worth a heftier 2,964 points), ahead of South Korea and Russia. These two countries finished behind China in the overall sport group ranking, which is set out below.

Besides China and South Korea, Asian nations as a whole had a proficient year in Target Sports: their combined share of the points was 31.6%, way higher than their current share of total Global Cup points of 13.8%.

In per capita terms (i.e. in terms of the number of citizens needed to score one GSN point in Target Sports), the most pin-point sharp countries in the top-20 ranking were Croatia, Norway and Slovakia.